


you've long seen your downfall spelled out in another's bones

by accessdenied



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Missing Scene, Other Hephaestus Crew Mentioned, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 04:16:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12004818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accessdenied/pseuds/accessdenied
Summary: He's going through an unconventional grieving process.





	you've long seen your downfall spelled out in another's bones

**Author's Note:**

> [title from the Scorpio entry in september's Shitty Horoscopes, chapter xii: obituaries.](https://shittyhoroscopeszine.tumblr.com/post/143809763512/musterni-illustrates-shitty-horoscopes-book)
> 
> i've had this vaguely kicking around in my head since i first listened to the s3 finale. One of Them started it coalescing, and Dirty Work solidified it.

The Maxwell Voice sounds angry this time she comes to visit, angrier than he's seen ( ~~heard~~ ) her in years, angry in the way she only used to get during that short slice of time between when she first judged him to be trustworthy and when she hadn't yet gotten used to Kepler's paternalism. Back then those rants had made him uncomfortable in ways he couldn't put into words, caught between needing to defend him ( ~~ingrained~~ ) and wanting to back her ( ~~honest~~ ), but now he'd pay good money for a reprise, awkward emotions and all. It's ironic that he can't stop noticing every grating thing about the colonel only now that she can't appreciate it, that he can't stop knowing exactly how she'd react to them, a derisive comment under her breath, a bombastic encore once they were alone. She was always better at mocking Kepler than he was, had a better grasp of his affected cadence even though she hadn't been working with him as long. ( ~~She was always better than him at a lot of things~~.) It's ironic. Isn't it?

It's something. Jacobi doesn't particularly care what.

The Maxwell Voice would be pacing if she weren't only a figment of his imagination. Since she is, he indulges the picture for thirty seconds or so: Alana Maxwell, animate and in one piece, stalking back and forth across the room ( ~~Magnanimously, he lets her have gravity~~.) like she's attacking the floor with her feet, gesturing wildly and explosively for emphasis on every other word. She was always so still and self-contained until she got really angry. It was a bit funny to watch, not that he'd ever admit it.

"Daniel Kenneth Jacobi," the Maxwell Voice says in a lethal hiss, "I swear on your duck-fearing soul, if you _find Jesus_ because I kicked the bucket--"

"It's not _finding Jesus_." He doesn't have the energy to put as much scorn and sarcasm into the words as they deserve. "It's bargaining. Bargaining is one of the stages of grief, right?"

"Three years ago you told me the only real stages of grief are day-drinking and vehicular arson," she accuses.

"Of which I can do _neither_ at the moment," he shoots back. "I'm branching out, okay? Get off my case, I'm trying to think."

"No, _dumbass_ , you're trying to electrocute yourself in a pointless attempt to rewire the comms panel in your cell to broadcast outside the station so you can, _what_. Ask the aliens to pretty please with a cherry bomb on top air-mail you a new copy of your best friend because somebody was playing with the old one and she _got broken?_ That's a terrible plan on so many levels, I don't even know where to start chewing you out for it."

"It's not a terrible plan," Jacobi mutters. The snapped-off end of his toothbrush makes a passable screwdriver as long as he goes slow enough that it won't break any further, but it's still a bit too thick. He's progressing through his fingernails for the smaller screws. Hopefully there's no more than ten between him and the circuitry, because both thumbs, an index finger, and a pinky are already ragged and weeping tiny flecks of blood.

"It _is_ a terrible plan, and you know it, or else I wouldn't be here yelling at you!"

"If Eiffel can do this, so can I."

"Eiffel's an idiot savant. Eiffel's a level 100 bard who's spent his entire life dumping his EXP into the one skill tree. Eiffel usually has _real tools_."

"The aliens already popped out a Lovelace and a me. Zhang's ship from the seventies was fucking _lousy_ with clones. This is possible."

"I don't need to enumerate the differences between the Tiamat mission and this one. Professor Kepler would've left them out of the lecture, of course, but you've known him long enough to hear what he _isn't_ saying in the pauses between what he _is_. And you're absolutely right about Lovelace and you. They've got one of their own on board, and their attempts to load another didn't work, and they're not likely to waste more resources when one mouthpiece is already functioning just fine."

"Not even if I'm _reeeally_ polite?"

"No, Daniel, not even if you're _reeeeeeeaaaaaaally_ polite." Her eyeroll is audible. "This is an utter waste. I mean, God, at least wait until you've managed to steal a soldering gun."

"You wouldn't mind," he says, very, very quietly.

The Maxwell Voice is silent. The Maxwell Voice has not gone away. The silence is the message, and an extremely pointed one at that.

Too damn bad. If she didn't want him to say it, she shouldn't have died.

"You wouldn't mind," Jacobi repeats, slightly louder. "The captain's shaky now. Flinches at her own reflection. I hear you snorting every time I see her do that, you know? You wouldn't mind at all, not being human. Hell, it's practically something you _wanted!_ All your knowledge, and your personality, and your thought processes, and the only thing you have to give up in exchange for being goddamn _bulletproof_ is a few minutes of control every once in a while? I know you, Alana, I _know_ you would have made that trade in a _nanosecond_ , and you're not around anymore so the least I can do is make that trade _for_ you!!"

His words rose to a shout near the end and it echoes off the metal, _for you for you for you for you_ fading into nothing ( ~~like the nothing this is~~ ), and when the Maxwell Voice speaks up again she's gentle.

Her gentleness has always been so much worse than her anger.

"And that's what this is, isn't it? You, alone in a little box, praying for a miracle from a higher power. It's the same spirit--pun intended--as turning religious."

Two can play the pointed silence game, but Maxwell isn't actually _here_ , she's just in his _brain_ , and he hasn't been able to make his brain shut up since about an hour after he trapped himself on an experimental module for four days.

"I don't want that, Daniel. I don't want you grasping at straws. I don't want you living one moment to the next on the empty wish for a thing that only _might_ be possible. It doesn't matter what I would have done. What I would have done stopped mattering sometime while I was tied to a chair with a gun in my face, and you _know_ that. You also know what I _did_ want, because I told you, and you remember."

Jacobi doesn't respond, but the words are trapped behind his teeth and his breathing has gone ( ~~close to a sob~~ ) unsteady and he's picking compulsively at a screw that refuses to budge.

She can wait him out. She's always been better at waiting than him, too.

"'Don't make a big deal out of it'," he recites dully. "Extraction out of that one job in Germany that went kind of south. We had seven hours to kill hiding in the train's luggage car. We hadn't slept in over a day and couldn't until we made it to the safehouse. You started talking to keep yourself awake, but then you went and got it frickin' _notarized_ once we were back in the States. 'Don't make a big deal out of it. When I die, you get my stuff, and that's all. Blow up anything that's classified, sell the rest on craigslist, buy yourself a nice vintage grenade or something else equally dangerous and dumb.'"

"'Gotta stay on brand, don't I?'" the Maxwell Voice quotes with a teasing undercurrent, and this is-- he's imagining his dead best friend imitating his words from one conversation three years ago while tearing his fingernails to bloody shreds trying to open up a comms panel that he doesn't know how to adjust in a repurposed room on a broken-down space station seven point eight light years away from the planet where the conversation took place so he can beg some aliens to give him something that's sort of hopefully a little bit like what she used to be. It's ridiculous. It's stupid. It's not going to work. It hurts so fucking bad that he's almost grateful for the pain in his fingertips that stabs in time with his pulse.

That's what he said in Germany, dry and flat.

This is what he wanted to say, but didn't: You're not going to die.

This is what he wanted to say, but didn't: I won't let you die.

This is what he wanted to say, but didn't: I would rip the universe apart at the atomic level to get you back.

"There's no going back, Daniel," the Maxwell Voice says, and she's even gentler. "You know that. I knew that. I don't want you burying yourself in the past. I want your eyes open. Looking forward."

The petty obstinate part of him lashes out, _what you **want** doesn't matter anymore now does it_ , but a much bigger part straightens up and says, _Alright then_.

Forward.

It is a god damn travesty that the person responsible for her death is still breathing the recirculated air in this universe where Alana Maxwell _isn't_. It's a waste, when you get down to it. Energy and oxygen, all spiraling down the drain at a steady rate of twelve to eighteen breaths per minute.

"Now _there's_ the Daniel Jacobi I knew," the Maxwell Voice says slyly.

He could do something about that.

**Author's Note:**

> me: i don't particularly care for maxwell  
> also me: i live and die on the power of maxwell <> jacobi alone


End file.
